God's Sufficient Grace

Fun with students

I've been praying recently that the Lord would help me to enjoy my students and to find delight in them. He has over and abundantly answered that prayer with so many fun, "giggly" and precious moments with my kids in class! He is teaching me to take the time to pause and enjoy their responses to music and even the expressions on their faces (instead of being so strict about sticking to my lesson plans) and to take the time to just laugh with them. I don't know how much of the following will make sense - I think most of these things are "had to be there" moments - but even just for my own sake, I wanted to write them down. And maybe, if you read, you can get a picture of what my students are like...

Things that make me giggle and bring me great joy:

*hearing my K4 students (especially Harrish and Nathan) sing back to me "Hello, Miss Catherine" (sol-mi, sol-sol-mi) with the biggest smiles on their faces

*Ji-Won's expression (another K4 student) as she is frozen mid-movement, looking at me expectantly as we play the "Talking Tambourine", just waiting to see if the tambourine will say to walk or skip.

*watching Camp (4th grade) play recorder, sitting perfectly (almost too) erect with his elbows straight out to his sides, not realizing how extreme he looks. I've dubbed him my "perfect recorder posture man"!

*my 6th grade violinists: every time I say "get your violins up" they all hold them up high in the air. It cracks me up! They are a truly nutty class!

*the expression on all my students’ faces when I told them that Handel was ESL! : )

*seeing my students get so into the listening selection of the week - squealing with surprise and delight during Haydn's surprise symphony; creating vivid and interesting stories while listening to "March to the Scaffold" and thinking that Berlioz looks like Abraham Lincoln (we have composer posters at school that I've been using); "moving" with my K and 1st grade students to the music and giggling with them through it. Some of my 4th grade girls who have music on Wednesday told me that they always look at the "Composer Corner" (where I hang the poster and name of the piece for the week) on Tuesdays when they are in the music room for Good News Club - so they always have a "sneak preview"! During Beethoven's week, when we listened to part of his 9th symphony, they came to class with a recorder version of "Ode to Joy" and played it for everyone. I was amazed at the coincidence until they told me that they had seen the sign the day before and looked it up!

*Miss Mary's 4th grade class. Because it's last period on Friday - when we're ALL ready for the weekend - we often get silly. Last week when I asked the students to play a certain song on their recorders and counted them off, I saw Benz (who was sitting right in front of me) scramble for his recorder and hurriedly lift it to his mouth, only to realize that he was holding it upside-down! Pratu (one of the sweetest little girls in the class) saw it out of the corner of her eye and made the funniest expression as she tried to hold in her laughter. I lost it and not 2 measures into the song had to cut the whole class off and let the rest of the students in on what had happened. It took us a while to regain "self-control" enough to continue on with class!

*my K students at Prong Jai. That class only has 6 students, so it is a lot more relaxed. We play a lot of music games which require one student to close his/her eyes while I give an object and/or call on another student to sing, then letting the one student guess who it was. My Prong Jai Kindergartners LOVE making ME be the one to close eyes, then they always think of some silly way to try and trick me, never imagining that I can tell exactly what they're doing! A few weeks ago, Jonathan (usually the leader of the class silliness), figured out that I could probably hear everything they were scheming, so he came up behind me and covered my ears with his hands. It didn't block out any of their talking and it was so funny it hear them plan together how they were going to "trick Miss Catherine"!

*(sweet not funny:) chubby little Pan Pan (one of the K students at Prong Jai), pulling out the handkerchief in her shirt pocket and wiping her tear-filled eyes after listening to "This is How We Know" (1 John 3:16 - from Steve Green's "Hide 'Em in Your Heart"). "It's so beautiful!" she said.

*the silence that comes over the room when I take out the child's story Bible and read a story about Jesus before we sing "Tell Me the Story of Jesus" (the newest hymn we're working on). They all listen so intently (unless they've heard the story before, in which case they're raising their hands and practically bounding out of their seats because they want to tell the story!).

*the story of this week was of Jesus' last meal with His disciples when He instituted the "Lord's Supper". After quoting Him saying "This is my body...this is my blood", one of my students asked "What about His bones?" Another student got excited - "It's just like 'Nothing but the Blood'!"

posted by Catherine Rogers @ 9:24 AM